Scanners

Cinema club last night (Belle de Bengal where were you?)

The thing about groups and communities (of any sort) is that you are able to meet people who share the same, often quirky, passions. Having friends who are just as weird about a certain thing as you are is often a highly liberating experience.

So, there we were, post-film, talking about what we’d just seen when I came across a lady. She has that fiery-art-teacher-used-to-be-a-hippy look. I love it. Have always loved women like that. Women who pave the road to creative salvation.

When asked what she did she said she’s an ex docu lady (I seem to be doing extraordinarily well on this count). And now she was taking up acting and writing ’seriously’.

Then she told me about this book she’d be reading. A book which was on the path of changing her life. Hmm. Too many books proclaim to do this. Change your life. And no, I don’t think many do. Some books you’ll come to love, others will make you think for months after you’ve flipped over the last page and others will stay on your bookshelf without ever being read, because something better always came along.

Now to this book:

In life, apparently, there are some people who have one goal. ‘I want to be an accountant‘ for example. And they will spend their entire life working towards that goal, achieving it and then spending their life still wanting to be an accounting. And then there are scanners (of which I am most definitely one). Scanners don’t feel satisfied just doing one thing in their life and want to try everything. Further, ambitious scanners want to be successful at everything they try. Everything. Sort of like me wanting to win the booker prize. Or the award for best orgasm giver 2007.

So, they’ve finally found a word to describe me. And it couldn’t really be a truer indication of who I am. Try everything, be good at everything. Life is too short to give solely to one thing. Of course, the biggest question of all I ask myself on a daily basis is ‘What shall I do when I want to do everything’.

This theory applies to work and play equally. There are a million holes that could be filled. A trillion. So you have to be selective. Which holes are worthy. Which holes won’t you survive without filling? Short listing all the way. Too much scattered ambition can lead to you feeling unsatisfied all the time with each of your endeavours. Take the best things and keep at them. And plan. Planning is the only way of making sure it all gets done.

On that note. I have two months in which to lose the virginity if I want to fulfil the promise. Must put this at the top of my list. May the scanning (of the other sort) continue. Now.